Hattie Cotton STEMMagnet Elementary School

At a Glance

Serves grades Pre-K - 4

Maplewood Cluster

Open Enrollment

Offers bus transportation

Offers before or aftercare

Welcome From the Principal

Jocelyn AdamsPrincipal

Greetings Hattie Cotton Colts Families,

Welcome to the 2017-2018 school year! I am honored and excited to join the Hattie Cotton STEM Magnet Elementary School community as your new principal. I am thrilled to work with such a dedicated staff, supportive parents, and an involved community. Through collaboration, we will continue to focus on what is best for our students. We have high expectations for all of our students, and we are committed to a student-centered academic program that will promote rigor and complexity.

As a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) school, we will work to ensure that all students learn at high levels, and these disciplines will be strongly embedded throughout the curriculum. In order for our students to experience continued success, we recognize that they must be prepared to meet the challenges and demands of the 21st century. At Hattie Cotton STEM Magnet Elementary School, we will provide students with hands-on-experiences, and opportunities to problem-solve, make real-world connections, collaborate, and think critically.

I look forward to partnering with you. Please feel free to contact me with questions and concerns as we move forward to have a successful year!

Pathways

School Description

Hattie Cotton is a STEM-based magnet school. All core subjects are taught with an emphasis on the Engineering Design Process and the components of STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. This approach is designed to allow students to think in unconventional ways about solving problems that we face in the real world. STEM aims to teach the “whole” student in order to foster the skills necessary to become academically competitive now and in the future.

At Hattie Cotton, teachers transform the typical teacher-centered classroom into an environment that is student-driven in the following ways:

Cooperative learning: Students are actively engaged in the learning processes and working in collaboration with other students to accomplish a shared goal.

Inquiry-based learning: Students are encouraged to ask questions for a better understanding.

Project-based learning: Students explore real-world problems and challenges relevant to their lives outside of school.

Differentiated instruction: Allows students different avenues of acquiring content or making sense of ideas in a diverse classroom setting.

Interdisciplinary instruction: Promotes an approach where teachers connect all content areas across instructional units for deeper understanding of instructional standards.

Hattie Cotton partners with scientists from Vanderbilt University who assist in the development, implementation and delivery of stimulating, hands-on science explorations related to each grade level’s academic standards. A scientist visits our 4th grade classes weekly to co-teach in our very own science lab. Each nine weeks, these lessons relate to our current Project-Based Learning themes and allow students to ask questions and explore with a real scientist.

Family Portal

Featured

With Family Portal, families can see real-time class and assignment grades, homework, test scores, upcoming due dates, attendance information, discipline incidents and more. It allows for better communication between teachers and families through emails and mobile alerts. Teachers can send messages to parents and they can post important news and announcements for families to see. Click here for registration instructions and to learn more about Family Portal: www.mnps.org/familyportal